(I provided a background to this series in the first part which you can find here.)
Part the Second: Ancient Historians
For the ancient Greeks, the ultimate test of the educational system was the moral and political quality of the students that it produced.
Henry Giroux
Ancient societies had anthropomorphic gods: a huge pantheon expanding into centuries of dynastic drama; fathers and sons, martyred heroes, star-crossed lovers, the deaths of kings – stories that taught us of the danger of hubris and the primacy of humility.
Tom Hiddleston
I have a long view of history – my orientation is archaeological because I’m always thinking in terms of ancient Greece and Rome, ancient Persia and Egypt.
Camille Paglia
Having covered the idea of providential history, I now fast forward to c. 425 B.C.E. and the most likely date for the first publication of The Histories by the Greek author Herodotus (c. 484 – c. 425 B.C.) In common with the providential histories, Herodotus almost certainly first compiled his work to be presented orally as a public performance.
For most historians this is the foundational moment, the first âtrueâ history published by the first âtrueâ historian. Those quotation marks are used because neither Herodotus nor his Histories would meet modern-day criteria. But, Herodotus and his work are both seminal â the foundation of history as a profession. However, like most pioneers, Herodotus did not make a clean break with what came before. Rather, he represents something of a blend of the providential with an attempt to be objective. As such, there is much that is modern in his work, but also much that does not pass muster.
First, the good. For all his faults, Herodotus did make at least some attempt to arrive at the truth regarding historical events. He traveled to many locations where the events he wrote about took place. He interviewed survivors. In some cases where he was unableâor perhaps unwillingâto come to a definitive conclusion, he included competing accounts in his work. Moreover, Herodotus provided geographical, cultural, agricultural, and other contexts. Thus, his accounts do not deal with abstract figures moving on a page, but with real people living in a real world. Herodotus also, at times, introduces the work of other historians. Although he usually disagrees with them, he at least argues with them â an important development we now refer to as historiography (of which more later in this series).
The bad: Herodotus still lived in a world of gods. As such, those gods make appearances in his accounts. Although men are, usually, ultimately responsible for their actions, the gods interfere. Herodotusâ history may not be providential, but it has providential elements. Herodotus also exaggerated, particularly in the size of military formations. Most likely one reason for this is one of the strengths I noted above â the use of eyewitnesses. Herodotus accepted eyewitness testimony at face value, something which we understand today to be problematic.
Of course, like all historians, Herodotus was challenged early on by his peers. His most famous critic was fellow historian Thucydides (c. 460 – c. 400 B.C.).
Thucydides seems to have been critical of Herodotus for at least two reasons. First, Thucydides was more “rational” in his approach, discounting or ignoring the old Greek myths and acts of the gods as an explanation for historical events. However, it also seems Thucydides was not a fan of the performance aspect of Herodotus’ work. While Herodotus gets the primacy, Thucydides is a key figure in developing history as a field of study. He also sought out eyewitnesses and included ethnographic information. The Peloponnesian War stands as one of the great works of ancient history.
One mark of the rising importance of history is that both Herodotus and Thucydides seem to have been imitated by others. Writing history became a recognized occupation – and one that was critiqued by others. In the second century A.D., the Syrian satirist Lucian (c. 125 – after 180) wrote The Way to Write History (links to full text). Lucian noted his admiration for both Herodotus and Thucydides, describing them as examples of “the best historians.” But he decried many of his contemporaries, declaring “everyone you meet is a Thucydides, a Herodotus, a Xenophon. The old saying must be true, and war be the father of all things, seeing what a litter of historians it has now teemed forth at a birth.” He demanded objectivity and an absence of passion, asserting that the “historianâs one task is to tell the thing as it happened…For history, I say again, has this and this only for its own; if a man will start upon it, he must sacrifice to no God but Truth; he must neglect all else; his sole rule and unerring guide is this â to think not of those who are listening to him now, but of the yet unborn who shall seek his converse.”
Before we depart the western tradition, I should mention Eusebius (c. 260/265-339) the great early historian of the church. Eusebius clearly sought, in his Ecclesiastical History to present the church as having been created by God. He wanted his work to both support the church as it existed in the early fourth century AND to support the idea that God had raised Constantine as a defender of the faith. Historian Paul Maier declared that, if Herodotus was the father of history, then Eusebius was the father of church history. While much of what Eusebius wrote has been called into question by more modern studies, his work remains an important source for much the same reasons as that of Herodotus and Thucydides: Eusebius makes reference to, and provides quotations from, works which are no longer extant.
As I worked on this series, I realized that much of it is really looking at the history of history writing within a western context. I make no apologies for that since itâs what I know. However, I do want to include a brief discussion here of the Chinese historian Sima Qian (c. 145 – c. 86 B.C.), considered the father of Chinese historiography.
Qian was the author of Records of the Grand Historian, an account of Chinese history from the Yellow Emperor (the probably mythical founder of China – and possibly an Ancient Alien) to the reign of Emperor Wu of the Han Dynasty (the emperor who ruled when Qian wrote). Although Records set the style for subsequent Chinese dynastic histories, Qian differed in that he wrote about both the positive and the negative of historical figures. As a court historian, he had to exercise caution in this so, in many cases, the account of a particular emperor will contain only positive information. But in the account of a successor, Qian will include negative info about the preceding emperor. Qian also mostly steered away from pronouncing the divine right to rule for the historical figures of which he wrote.
As we end this brief survey of ancient historians, their craft is not the modern beast we see in recent times. However, many historians now saw their role as, in some way, seeking out the truth of events. Historians will certainly be influenced by their own biases and views and will tend to trust official records and eyewitnesses perhaps more than they should. BUT, they are seeking, in their own way, to tell the truth of the matter. And, to one degree or another, they have departed from attributing history to the gods and, instead, emphasize the importance of human action.
Curious on your thoughts as a professional on Suetonius and his contributions to Roman history.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suetonius
He does make for fun read at the very least.
I remember having to read Suetonius as part of a history course on the Roman Empire.
I did too.
I remember the professor saying Suetonius was part court gossip, part actual history.
Since I don’t study ancient history myself, I need to rely on the analysis of others. That said, my general sense is that he’s mostly reliable, had access to the imperial archives BUT also throws in a lot of gossip and trashy stuff. He was also writing for Trajan and Hadrian, so was probably more negative than accurate with someone like Domitian.
But the gossip is the best part. And it gave us Bob Guccione’s Caligula!
Nobody is reliable. It’s a matter of figuring out what they got wrong and what slant they put on their read and presentation.
Well, nobody is perfectly reliable, including on what they personally saw happen yesterday.
Whenever I see Herodotus mentioned, my brain autocompleted “Herodotus the Liar”.
No I do not respect the man.
In the link, when Herodotus was accused of making stories up:
“Herodotus retorted that he reported what he could see and what he was told. A sizable portion of the Histories has since been confirmed by modern historians and archaeologists.”
So?
There are a lot of modern historians and archeologists I don’t respect either.
Just because he laid his lies atop a real backdrop doesn’t make him less of a liar.
So calling him a liar seems a bit harsh. I was a History Major. Most of our accepted history is no better. Lots of it is propaganda written by the winners.
Harsh? It’s Mild. I have not yet begun to be harsh to dead people.
Being mean to dead people seems kinda pointless.
But at least they take it well.
Modern historians doubt a lot of shit for really dumb and political reasons. Some of it is just cynical progressivism – we are better today than those bumpkins of the past. Then you get accounts that are dismissed because they tell uncomfortable truths that don’t jive with modern political sensibilities.
How often is anything and everything written by the Spanish in the New World dismissed as fable to gin up more money and ships for further ‘exploration?’ Constantly. How much is slowly being shown to be true? A lot where it is verifiable. But when it comes to stuff like the myths of the locals, you won’t find any acceptance among modern historians because of muh white supremacy!
Let’s challenge Unciv. What lies of substance did Herodotus tell that so greatly offend you? I’m not talking about giant gold digging ants or other weird shit.
You expect me to dig out something I haven’t read in years to satisfy your goading?
You’ll just declare anything presented as not good enough.
But when it comes to stuff like the myths of the locals, you wonât find any acceptance among modern historians because of muh white supremacy!
For a concrete example, see e.g. building new telescopes on Mauna Kea. And conversations with highly credentialed, atheists, ‘rationalists’ arguing that we have to respect the traditions and beliefs of these native peoples and not oppress them or their sacred land. This from the same people who, if you objected to any of their funding, plans, or scientific work on a Christian basis would mock and deride you and dismiss your objections as superstitious nonsense.
If you feel that strongly about it, I’d just kind of expect you to have one big example to go off of. Or at least something that sticks out to you.
Why? I made my analysis, I kept the results and recycled the brainspace for more useful information.
There’s a condescending and hypocritical sense of supremacy behind it all.
You still can’t actually accept the myths and legends of natives and use them in a scholarly sense beyond relaying it and describing what you think it says about the culture they have.
This is one of Graham Hancock’s larger points that is overlooked as people mock him and unironically suggest he’s the white supremacist.
Ancient societies had anthropomorphic gods: a huge pantheon expanding into centuries of dynastic drama; fathers and sons, martyred heroes, star-crossed lovers, the deaths of kings â stories that taught us of the danger of hubris and the primacy of humility.
Stories with morals aren’t all bad, despite what modern “intellectuals” seem to believe.
Indeed. History as a dry compilation of data is missing an important purpose of studying the past.
An interesting note in how the Chinese record of history evolved. The later the real date of the writing, the earlier they pushed the start of the record with great certitude despite there being no supporting evidence for ever earlier dates and events. It does irk me when people take these “We have been here longer than we last claimed to have been here as a modern, city-building civilization!” claims at face value.
We have evidence of scattered agriculturalists about to the same age as other river systems, but they didn’t coalesce into cities and kingdoms until the same time as the Olmecs.
Meanwhile written Japanese history doesn’t really start until much later.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Historiography_of_Japan
I loved history and actually many electives in it in school, but had almost no Asian history. It was only much later that I became interested and realized just how much rich history China has.
In my musing on the topic, I did note how recently the Japanese imported writing.
I wish they didn’t source it from China. Japan decided to make them even more complex with multiple meanings and readings.
When my Japanese friends complain about English spelling and difficult pronunciations I always cheerfully push back on kanji (Chinese characters) and they begrudgingly agree.
Somehow each attempt at simplification managed to make it even more complicated.
Somehow each attempt at simplification managed to make it even more complicated.
Sounds like a government program.
WTF – Hangul may be the only exception.
It was created as a response to Chinese characters’ complexity. Chinese writing was also widely used in Korea until hangul was created.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Origin_of_Hangul
Speaking of history, none of you people picked up on my Hoover vs the Bonus Army reference earlier.
Disappoint, I am.
Silent Thucydides?
Scott Adams kind of ruined me. He notes that there are still main publications pushing the lies about Jan. 6, Covid, the “Fine People Hoax”, etc., and asks how those events will be recorded by those same people as they are written in history books. And knowing that, how can you trust anything you read about history?
History is written by the winners.
How do they have time to write history? Aren’t they supposed to be fucking the prom queen?
No, that’s just what they wrote in the narrative.
How do they have time to write history? Arenât they supposed to be fucking the prom queen?
Multitasking.
The winner is dictating to the prom queen while dick-ing the prom queen.
Abe Lincoln was born in a log cabin he built with his own two hands.
I sometimes tell family stories as they were told to me. I get corrected by someone else in the family and realize that I got this or that detail wrong. Then I hear the story from someone else and realize the story was not even told to me correctly. These are stories about events that have occurred either during or just before my lifetime.
Add dishonesty into the mix and history books are worth the paper they are printed on….maybe not even that.
He did have long arms, so he just reached out of the womb and built it pre-birth.
The human factor is a big problem. As you said, everyone has a different memory, and what’s in the history book depends on who they talked to. Now pass on that story for 100 years, and then record it. Archaeology does help I guess.
“What’s this thing?”
“Don’t know.”
“Must have a ritual purpose”
/Archologist standard technique.
Probably the most (in)famous of these was the George Washington & the cherry tree which was regarded as true for much of the 20th century. It wasn’t widely debunked until post-WWII.
I can’t imagine why he picked Iowa… Who doesn’t want to have equipment fail at harvest?
At Iowa State Fair, EPA Administrator Zeldin Announces Diesel Exhaust Fluid (DEF) Fix
https://www.epa.gov/newsreleases/iowa-state-fair-epa-administrator-zeldin-announces-diesel-exhaust-fluid-def-fix
Still bad, but much better.
I was unfamiliar with this. The greenies must love that. Pissing on farmers.
Appreciate the article. Thanks for writing!
Herodotus almost certainly first compiled his work to be presented orally as a public performance.
I didn’t know that.
widespread literacy is a modern aberration. So for most of history, any written work is either for a limited, literate audience, or to be read aloud.
That reminds me of a factoid I find interesting – During the early industrial revolution, there were actual jobs for people to read newspapers aloud to the workers.
widespread literacy is a modern aberration.
I knew that.
UnCiv, I had heard that. Picture a big room with people sewing or whatever.
I heard that was a thing at Cuban cigar factories.
It WAS a modern aberration. We are reverting to the historical mean presently.
I stopped reading modern historical accounts when I read a book on the fall of Rome that ended with a gleeful and excited account of how the empire finally fell entirely. You see, because Rome waged wars of aggression against its neighbors, the ancestors who had done little to deserve the aggression that fell down upon them from the barbarians just had it coming. Even in places where the locals would have been descended from those who had been conquered, anyway. All that raping and pillaging was basically just their comeuppance.
Now I went to school and took a lot of history classes. So yea I’ve read plenty of modern historical works after that, but never for pleasure or on my own.
I’d rather just read primary sources and try to make sense of what actually happened myself than trust most modern historians.
I take it that historian has not seen ‘Life of Brian’
Group response: I’m going to talk about more modern historians and what I see as the problems – and strengths – in some future installments.
Please mention Doris Kearns Goodwin!
I have her “Team of Rivals” in my pile of unread books. A relative thought I would enjoy it. I suspect I won’t.
Thank you! This is an interesting subject that most people don’t even think about.
I watched a PBS (I think) historical biography of Henry Ford. He was an evil ignorant bigoted hick who somehow or other ended up at the helm of what was quite possibly the largest and most successful manufacturing enterprise of its day.
Bigoted? Yes. Ignorant? No.
You can’t talk about historical figures without at a minimum apologizing for their flaws profusely. Too often in the the last generation it’s become a competition to see who can tear down great men the most.
He also raised wages for his workers so they could have a better life and “buy back” what they produced.
–Looks at primary sources. Or to reduce turnover to reduce cost.
This allowed him to market cheaper cars to not only people who were making Ford wages but also to the millions of those who did not make Ford wages.
Henry Ford did more to give individuals liberty than perhaps any other person in history. That and he was rich. Of course leftists hate him.
They do the same thing with Musk. I’m told he’s not really smart, the people that work for him are the smart ones and he really doesn’t do anything but take credit.
Anyone who ever said that to me never owned a business with employees.
Insert Heinlein’s bad luck quote.
You are correct. It seems likely that Musk is on the verge of being able to repair severed spines. Think about for a minute. To me that seems like kind of a big deal.
Bobby H was too far on the nihilist cynical side of reality.
The worship of Ford in Brave New World was something that always stuck with me.
No one in history was perfect because no human is perfect. What’s so troubling about today is a lot of academics and their acolytes view history through the lens of our society today. It’s foolish and destructive to have that sort of myopic view of history. MLK Jr, was a serial philanderer and a commie at the end of his life, but he still did a lot of good for black people. Henry Ford is another one who was a raging antisemite but created a product that has drastically increased the standard of living. Great men and women are complex people and to judge them by today’s standards is stupid.
Two things: Bobarian – Narratives are written by the winners.
Uncivil: Widespread literacy is a myth.
By what do you make that assessment?
By meeting people.
I think the problem may get worse.
On the flip side of that anecdata, I have met zero functionally illiterate people who were not small children.
the proportion of the population capable of reading is still significantly higher than at most points in history. Though if the schools are not dealt with, they will continue to create functional illiterates and we will resume the slide to the historical mean.
UCS:
Counterpoint.
(I’ve shared this before: College English majors can’t read / They have one job and they can’t do it). To me, this piece is really insightful, and has much further reach than even the author really considers.
You have a higher opinion of English Majors than I do.
At least they’re not Studies Majors.
It also sounds like they have a different definition for functional literacy. They appear to have it as a higher standard, whereas I’ve always seen it as the lower standard “the minimum to function” literacy whereas their 4/5 rating would be “full literacy” in the parlance I’ve been accustomed to.
UCS:
I expect a literate person to understand simile, metaphor, and ideological constructs. Minimum to function in the modern world doesn’t even need much in the way of words, as there’s symbols and pictures for most items now.
That rates fully literate.
I will take a stab at it…
Effective communication is one person transmitting ideas to another person who can receive and correctly translate that idea. Literacy is the ability to do both of those. Let me consult an expert:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GDuym_qtEuw
My mother is an extremely literate and intelligent person, but she does not understand these things. She’s very literal, and has spent most of her working life immersed in balance sheets. It’s actually caused a few bits of irritation the last few months because [insert long explanation here] it involves lots of “WELL ACKSHUALLY.” I have never been so heavily “WELL ACKSHUALLY”d in my life as I have since Mom got back on her feet.
I’m working on not taking things personally that are not meant personally because that’s what mature people do. Also, my degree is in creative writing and journalism (with a smattering of linguistics), not literature.
My problem with literature studies is that it requires you to analyze/critique/break down/deconstruct/destroy the work in question. It may require you to ascribe author motives that may not have existed, contemporary society that may not be adequately or correctly assessed, and/or read symbols, motifs, themes that may be anachronistic or flat wrong. Everybody brings their own baggage to the work, and too many people bring irrelevant baggage to it (or relevant to THEM, but are unable to defend its relevance). I can do this, usually very well, but even done correctly, much of it is irrelevant to life, to art, and generally speaking, I don’t like to destroy things until they need to be fixed or jettisoned. I’m not even curious about anything enough to destroy it to find out how it works.
I like to create. I want to build, not destroy. Thanks to my literature training, I CAN weave themes, symbols, motifs, etc., into my work, but most good storytellers are (should be) well read enough to be able to do it subconsciously*. If the work entertains someone, there really is no need for anything deeper.
Now, my sister-in-law once made the assertion that writing a paper deconstructing a work is its own type of creativity, and I agree to an extent, insofar as you’re either explaining in your own words what these symbols, themes, and motifs really mean, so you’re regurgitating everything everybody else has said for decades, or you’re reading into it shit that’s not there.
*I did that a couple of times in the first book I published. Readers pointed out how clever they were by seeing how clever *I* was with Thing X and Thing Y and oh my that was clever! Except I didn’t do it on purpose, and in fact, didn’t even notice. đ
Seems a bit unfair to me to use Dickens to test whether students understand concepts like figurative language. It’s something that when you’re reading it, particularly if you haven’t been exposed to it before, you’re just wondering what basic words even mean. You have no cultural context for what’s going on. It’s like trying to decipher a somewhat foreign language writing about a world you don’t really understand to begin with.
So like a lot of studies, it comes off as bunk even if it validates my already low opinion of most students and our education system as a whole.
LOL I was thinking of Dickens, but I hadn’t clicked Neph’s link. I was thinking of Tale of Two Cities. Read that and Romeo and Juliet in high school.
I understood Dickens just fine. Shakespeare, I have to read aloud, in a rhythm that honors the actual punctuation, not with the meter. It’s easier if I can copy/paste into a document, then run the lines together like proper narrative fiction.
It’s funny because I’d say the exact opposite. I have to read Dickens slowly to figure out what the fuck he’s saying. Shakespeare I could generally just pick up with confusion on the general oddball term that I couldn’t decipher on my own.
I had to read their example paragraph twice to make sense of it myself and without being an arrogant douche, I know I’m far above the average English major.
Brochettaward:
If they were using it to test grade/middle schoolers, I’d agree. These were college students in the English program. Dickens should not trip up a college student in an English program. One of the examples was a solicitor with great whiskers, which was interpreted by many of the students as saying the solicitor was some kind of an animal, like a cat.
I would argue that all of these students have at least at one point in their life seen a “No Soliciting” sign, which should at least provide context that a solicitor was a person (I’d expect them to also think salesperson over lawyer).
I say this without judgment or defense: Most college students that age aren’t going to be familiar with either long-form reading, understanding description without context, or think to look up words they don’t understand.
“Michaelmas” … It’s got “mas” on the end of it, so maybe something to do with Christmas? But it says “November” later, so okay. It’s some sort of holiday.
“Lord Chancellor” … some kind of ruler.
“Lincoln’s Inn Hall” … where the ruler-dude is.
“mud in the streets” … the rest of the blah blah blah is immaterial, especially the Megalosaurus
“smoke […] soot” … OG Beijing, mourning immaterial
“Foot passengers” … lots of them, okay, slipping on mud, and they’ve all got umbrellas, WTF compound interest-irrelevant.
Also, Dickens was a serial writer and paid by the word.
I, teaching this to high schoolers, would probably break it down as above, teaching them what parts are immaterial and what parts are fan-service to the trends/fads/information of the day (dinosaurs were a new concept), how people heated their homes and what a mess it made everywhere, that it rains in Britain ALL the fucking time, so even if the streets were paved, there was mud everywhere, author’s whimsy (“gone into mourning, one might imagine, for the death of the sun), sarcasm/self-deprecation (“if this day ever broke”), simile indicating passage of time (“at compound interest”), then kind of set the stage for the rhythm of the rest of the story.
I think it’s REALLY IMPORTANT when you’re teaching literature, to emphasize that there is a STORY, and to try to have fun with the STORY, what’s important to appreciate the story and what you can kind of skim over. Then we can all go back and discuss the details.
But as @OMWC has described before, his college-age employees can’t count change, so…
And Saturday, I spent 4 hours trapped in a car with a ranty 19yo who’s shocked that people twice his age and older have no critical thinking skills and no willingness to learn anything new. “I’m not discounting your lived experience. I believe you know how to clean. I would like you to learn this other way of cleaning.”
This is why dictionaries exist. And these days you don’t even need to go grab one off the shelf like I did when I was young. You just highlight the word on your tablet or phone and it pops up. Part of the value in reading books older than last week is that it gives you a window on both the changes, and constancies in human life between eras. It makes me sad to think that people find Dickens hard to understand. Not because I like Dickens. I don’t. I think he was a hack. But because his era was in many ways a very good period in English speaking culture and some understanding of that era is important to fixing some of the mess we have made moving on from it in incoherent directions.
âMost college students that age arenât going to be familiar with either long-form reading, understanding description without context, or think to look up words they donât understand.â
And thatâs exactly the problem. College students, even freshmen, should be able to read at that level. College students should be the top 10 – 15% academically. When you lower standards, as we have, so that anyone of average academic aptitude can get in, well, you get students who canât read the canon.
All of written history is just the narrative, though.
A distinction without difference?
Trump is a monster
https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/trump-administration-reclassifying-marijuana/story?id=124552149
Trump says his administration looking at reclassifying marijuana
“We’re looking at reclassification and we’ll make a determination over the next — I would say over the next few weeks, and that determination hopefully will be the right one. It’s very complicated subject,” Trump said as he held a news conference in the White House briefing room.
UNschedule it dickhead. Unschedule it.
Procedurally, what is involved in descheduling a drug versus rescheduling?
I don’t think he can completely unschedule/legalize it. He would need Congress for that. However, he can change the scheduling by executive order.
okay.
Go Trump Go!
If memory serves, the President can reschedule it based on the recommendation of the Attorney General.
Unscheduling it is decriminalizing it, which would require Congress to get off its fat, corrupt ass and do something.
Marijuana is currently scheduled as more dangerous than heroin and cocaine. I don’t think Trump can schedule it any worse, so anything would be an improvement.
I believe it is classified as dangerous as heroin (schedule I – no currently accepted medical use and a high potential for abuse) and more dangerous than cocaine (Schedule II – Some accepted medical use)
Trump just wants everyone high while he steals our democracy.
I was gonna resist fascism, but I got high.
It is not very complicated. No one cares about dopeheads or people’s health or the children. It is about money, that is all.
Relative to this subject I try to keep in mind what the base/stock model is and how it spend many millennia without any upgrades
https://d259mopmdd4k9z.cloudfront.net/wp-content/uploads/2023/05/09130219/North-Sentinel-Island-India.jpg
The wide stance while wagging the pecker and brandishing weapons overhead is the standard warning ‘I am going to kill you and eat you’. It shows up in petroglyphs all over the world, Maori war dances, Sumo wrestling, and other places I cant be bothered to look up.
We are still in the monkey stage.
Another thing about Henry Ford; he didn’t think we should involve ourselves in European wars.
What a maroon.
As long as Ford-Werke is spared. Bonus for US reimbursement.
During the bombing of Cologne, instructions were given to allied bombers not to bomb the factory, owing to deep monetary ties of the American Ford Motor Company and Nazi Germany, [10] and hence was lightly damaged. After the war ended, production could restart in May 1945 with truck manufacture, the U.S. government having paid $1.1 million in consideration of bombing damage.[4]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ford_Germany
“History is an account, mostly false, of events, mostly unimportant, which are brought about by rulers, mostly knaves, and soldiers, mostly fools.”
-Ambrose Bierce
Paging FourScore, Paging FourScore
I have been involved in great events. I have had family members serve in every war in our history. To a man, after coming home and reading the accounts of those events, we all said “Wut? That is not what happened. That’s not how it was at all.”
Historians base their accounts from tales written from up high by the elites of institutions at this point. Yea, they talk to people on the ground level but there’s far more information and documentation from the generals and officers and bureaucrats in general to ignore and not use as your primary source material.
Bro’: I’d say the last 50 years of writing history would be an effective counterpoint to your argument. I’m going to deal with it in more detail in a future installment.
My main jazz has and always will be military history. And it was kind of what Suthen was getting at with his post.
I’m aware there is more attempt to give people slice of life histories and work from the bottom up in today’s world. I’m still not sure they’re getting it right. The hot new thing in military history from what I observed as a rank amateur is to focus on the grunts more with context provided as to what was going on in the bigger picture.
I should add that the authoritative sources on warfare still remain the stuff of old. It’s great to get accounts of trench warfare or accounts from soldiers on the ground in Vietnam, but the major historical works that people look to are still the ones that focus on the decision makers and the views of those up high.
*look to in order to understand the conflict.
Like, the accounts of soldiers in the classes I took were just supplemental fluff to supplement the lengthy old school works that were based on the documents of generals.
So I’m curious to read what you say on the subject. I’m not a historian and I don’t pretend to be one. Just this was my experience as a history major.
If you have ever seen a news report about events you had direct experience of you know that the report very seldom has any real connection to events. They get causation and blame backwards, names wrong, miss-report easily verifiable matters of record, timelines completely scrambled, locations wrong etc. That is a report where the person recording events has direct access to the people involved, memories are fresh, and evidence is readily available. It results from biases, ignorance of professional jargon, eye witness unreliability, and ordinary human fallibility.
Now imagine what you get when you add in a few centuries of distance from the event and all the editing of sources intervening political figures seeking legitimacy, religious figures shoring up dogma, and even historians with an axe to grind (which is all of them on some level) do.
Truth is a goal, but not one we are ever reaching.
I need to cut the spine off a hardback book. If anybody has a better way to do it than a circular saw, please advise.
CO2 laser.
đ
Just the spine? Leaving the pages bound together? I’d use an exacto knife carefully. You are going to end up with a chewed up mess using a circular saw I suspect
That’s no fun.
Dremel cut off wheel?
Those tend to be grinders, which do poorly with paper, I don’t like any of the saw/grider options to recommend. The paper guillotine press is my current favorite idea. But I’m not sure Mo has the parts.
The pages have to be scanned, so loose pages. Good point about the saw. I hadn’t thought of that.
Are you trying to separate the pages?
I’d go with a jigsaw or bandsaw, smaller teeth, thinner blades.
You could put a thinner cutting blade on a hydrolic press, but I think you don’t have a hydrolic press.
Lend it to John Belushi:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=POAB22PmHbY
You can take it to a print shop and have them use their paper cutter on it. That might be more trouble than it is worth if you already have a circular saw.
Yes, what I need is a proper guillotine, but I don’t know who would have such a thing. The little table-top paper cutter is not going to do it.
Ooh! Just called the UPS store. They can do it.
I was thinking of FedEx office, the Artist Formerly Known As Kinko’s.
proper guillotine
I used to run one of those — eight hours a day.
I worked in a print shop for a while. I didn’t operate machinery much. We had an old-fashioned one kinda like this, but the cutting action was hydraulic (I think), as well as a drill press for three-ring binder holes.
Since you’re here, Moj, I’d appreciate your opinion on my Aggravation of the Day: Just got the Explanation of Benefits for my recent colonoscopy, and the provider seems to have coded it as “surgery” instead of as “preventive care,” which my high-deductible plan covers completely. The difference to my Health Savings Account is the difference between $0 and $1881. đ
This was a routine procedure – no reason to believe anything was wrong (and nothing really was. Got a seven-year reprieve.) Wrong code? (I apologize if this triggers any PTSD, given your acquired distate for med coding.)
This is a money grab and a made-up reason for your insurance company not to pay. HOWEVER, these might make a difference to them:
* Were you asked to come in for this?
* Did you have it on the schedule recommended (i.e., were you told to come back in 5 years and you went back at 4-1/2 years)?
* Did they remove polyps?
* Do you have any family history of polyps or colon cancer?
* Did they scope farther up than the sigmoid colon? (That information should be on your report, and/or if they give you pictures.)
I was told in February that if I got my colonoscopy sooner than the 3 years they recommended, I’d have to pay for it out of pocket. That was 8 months before I’m due.
Regardless the answers, I’d call up the doctor’s billing office and the insurance company and give them hell until you get it re-coded as a screening colonoscopy.
I have a message in to the provider asking “how for come no coded as preventive??”
(Recommended 5 years after previous one, done closer to 5.5 years after. Maternal grandmother.)
What if Trump picks an inflation nutter for Fed chair?
If he actually got around to defining “inflation nutter” I missed it.
It’s madness to not want to water down the money supply. Central bankers are totally just looking out for the average Joe when they print more money.
These days, large swathes of economists would call anyone who describes inflation as âthe money supply growing faster than the underlying economyâ a nutter.
Whereas I regard anyone who describes inflation as âjust a social construct, manâ as a nutter.
“Inflation is always and everywhere a monetary phenomenon in the sense that it is and can be produced only by a more rapid increase in the quantity of money than in output…”
I used to always say this quote by Milton Friedman whenever someone uses the idiotic term, greedflation. Then I got older and figured that anyone who uses that term isn’t worth arguing with anyway.
I tried to explain this to my son on Saturday. He seems to get the concept, but not the real-world implications.
HOWEVER, I can see why he may be confused, since it seems to me inflation has skyrocketed of its own volition since COVID, in conjunction with other black swan events (e.g., corporations snapping up single-family homes at inflated prices) and artificial market suppression (e.g., killing masses of chickens for a small outbreak on a small farm, not drilling our own oil), with stagnating wages, which increase is a) disproportionate to historical inflation, b) massive government funds injected into the economy to lots of people who produce nothing, and b) bass-ackwards from how it usually happens (money, then prices instead of prices, then money).
Most people think inflation is âprices going upâ, as if supply and demand donât affect prices.
âinflation has skyrocketed of its own volition since COVIDâ
This graph of the growth in the money supply (attributable to the massive increases in federal spending/deficits since COVID, as the âone-time emergencyâ spending became structural), may cast some light on that.
https://img.take-profit.org/graphs/indicators/money-supply-m0/money-supply-m0-united-states.png
Your link took me to a sketchy site and my Malwarebytes blocked it.
How’s this: Inflation is transitory, and it’s also a something made up by Republicans.
When I first heard the term transitory inflation from Jen Pasaki and Janet Yellen, I damned near had an aneurysm.
This is a huge peeve of mine. Inflation is not prices increasing. That is a symptom. Increasing the money supply is a direct theft from everyone holding cash, or contracts payable at a stated cash price. And just in case anyone thinks ‘holding contract payable at a stated cash price’ is some esoteric thing only rich people do, it isn’t.
Rich people actually tend to avoid doing this. You people with jobs are the ones who do it. Because that is what a job is. A contract to provide your services for a set rate of pay. Inflating the money supply reduces your rate of pay in real terms because each dollar is now worth less.
The money printers going brrrr is why all that income and wealth inequality the same assholes making them go brrrr bitch about, has steadily increased. It’s why our parents could afford houses that the kids cannot.
I’m not sure if advocating for Treasury bill rates of 1% (or less) as many people, including Trump, seem to want qualifies one as an inflation nutter. As far as that goes, is a Modern Monetary Theory fan an inflation nutter?
Is inflation good, or bad? How much is too much? The Fed certainly didn’t seem to want price stability.
Inflation is bad. It is a transfer of wealth from certain classes of assets to others. The ideal rate is 0%.
However, the Fed has an irrational (IMO) fear of deflation, so they aim for a constant rate of inflation. Although, that fear isnât necessarily irrational if you are a banker, because a money supply that is shrinking is likely to lead to defaults on loans, as the money to pay them becomes more scarce/valuable.
Inflation is what you want when your currency is debt (as ours is) and your economy runs on debt (as ours does), I suppose. Inflation favors the borrower, which generates business for banks (banks book loans as assets), and penalizes the saver, which makes the banksâ books look better, since deposits are booked as liabilities.
Loopholes!
A review of documents related to Camp Mystic â from county floodplain development records, an engineering study, FEMA flood map determinations and federal flood insurance studies â offers a window into a process that experts say plays out for thousands of properties each year, quietly shrinking the footprint of the nationâs flood risk on paper, even as climate change makes flooding a more severe threat on the ground.
That sounds right. After all, the oceans have risen fifty feet.
FEMAâs mapping alongside Cypress Creek, where the camp expanded in 2018, is 15 years old and represents a rough estimate of flood risk. It relies on imprecise topography maps, and the rainfall data it uses was last updated in the 1970s. Moreover, the FEMA maps of the area do not account for modern projections for storms intensified by climate change.
That storm rendered any historical data meaningless.
Speaking of history in the making/faking, a Cincinnati pastor now claims that the victim of a mob beating was the instigator and should be arrested:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KudQpIo35Ac
Here once more is the raw footage of the event:
https://x.com/mib_63/status/1949520563644387728
I don’t know what started that incident exactly, but it’s very revealing of how broken black culture is in this country that there are people in positions of power willing to excuse a gang attack on two people because they may or may not have said something wrong.
âWhite America has been watching us act like fools for a long enough time where any sympathy they may have had to our plight is completely gone.â
âAaron McGruder, 2003
Some more of my thoughts on this subject:
https://platedlizard.blogspot.com/2025/08/double-standards-in-crime-reporting.html